PodPress Version 5.7 (WordPress Podcasting Plugin)

Mighty Seek's awesome podcasting plugin has been through some major upgrades in the past week. Go check it out if you use WordPress.

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new look

spent some time tweaking in preparation for a big wordpress redesign at work. navigation is now at the bottom. not sure how i feel about it, but that's how it's gonna be for the time being.

"Manhattanhenge" this Sunday (5/28) in New York City

Next Sunday and on July 13, the sun will fully illuminate every Manhattan cross street (not the curved or angled ones) on the street grid during the last 15 minutes of daylight, and it will set on each street's center line. The NYC version of Stonehenge!

More info here.

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flickr no longer in beta

flickr has moved out of beta and into... gamma! pretty cool for them to acknowledge that it's still a work in progress, a web app that can only get better. i predict others will follow suit, to be trendy. though google may be stubborn and keep everything in beta... forever! ;)

anyway, other than the new gamma logo, the changes are very cool, too. the new "organizr" is my favorite upgrade, very useful stuff.

dmb warehouse membership package

dmb warehouse,
originally uploaded by quepol.

a light-up pen?? wtf? at least the live songs on "volume 5" are good. the msg show sounds like it was great... need to track down a torrent.

template hosed

apologies to anyone who might actually drop by here. i am noodling around with wordpress and managed to hose my blogger template. i know, step 1 of the instructions was "back up blogger template." but i'm lazy, and frankly, can't imagine too many people are even reading this. :)

CSPAN pulled Colbert video from YouTube, but Google Video is OK??

CSPAN pulled the video from YouTube for copyright reasons. But do they have the cajones to mess with Google? The Google Video blog features the WHC dinner -- the full version, and two shorter clips of Bush's "speech" and Colbert's "roast."

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GYM-free success!

well, i made it through the week without mentioning Google, Yahoo or MSN. fortunately i had bill o'reilly to bitch about and harry potter to look forward to. (totally excellent, by the way... but more on that later.)

it's late news, but hell, i might as well mention some of the big news that dropped last week. first up, Google Analytics. yup, google took urchin, souped it up with some ajax and a killer brand and made it free!

i have the "No Script" extension running in firefox, and i haven't "allowed" the google-analytics javascript yet just so i can see who is running it. nearly half of the sites i visit have already installed the service. hell, the first day it was announced most of the sites i visit on a regular basis were already running it. "like white on rice," as my PM guru larry used to say.

in other Google News, the bloginfamous (did i just create a word?) Google Base officially launched last week. we can officially move on from the "All your base are belong to Google jokes," and just dive right in. at first glance, the UI could use some major fixer-upping, but the depth of the app is pretty impressive. there have been rumours all around the blogosphere that this could be a craigslist/ebay/etc killer. i think it might be a bit too complicated for the average user to dive right in creating content. but as usual, the search aspect is definitely killer.

for example, search for "vegetarian recipes" and you're invited to narrow your search by clicking "recipes (94) cuisine (34) health (30) cooking (30) fitness (28) weightloss (28) more..." clicking cuisine lets you refine your search even more with links (recipes (33) main ingredient (24) vegetarian (20) vegan (5)) or a dropdown list of cuisine types (indian, italian, mexican, etc.). some killer search functionality, but in the end user satisfaction will be determined by content. and right now the content is pretty scattered and somewhat, dare i say, useless.

next up -- Google is officially in the WiFi provider market. they aren't admitting to plans of world domination just yet, but one bay area city council has approved their proposal to provide free Wi-Fi. no, it's not san francisco, but Mountain View, where google is headquartered.

"Essentially there's very little downside for us," [City Councilman Tom Means] said in an interview Wednesday. "It's an experiment. Google wants to do a test market here to see if they can do it, and they're going to pay us [for it]."

some experiment... "very little downside" is right. if GOOG pulls this off, mountain view is the flagship installation in a long line of GoogleNets. not too shabby.

and finally... have you looked at their stock lately?!?!? enough said. bubble 2.0 in full effect.

Infographic: Harry Potter 4 is PG-13

Infographic: Harry Potter 4 is PG-13,
originally uploaded by quepol.

Hilarious infographic from the latest volume of The Onion. Timely, of course since HP4 opens tomorrow.

We've already got IMAX tickets, baby!

"Fifteen minute allegory about foreign policy."
"Hagrid's 'Daddy Bear' lifestyle, which is more than hinted at this time."
"Scene where Lord Voldemort cuts off Harry's ear and douses him in gasoline to the tune of 'Stuck in the Middle With You'."

priceless.

DirectTV and XM Radio finally get their act together

DirecTV is now streaming 72 XM radio stations!

As part of DIRECTV's dedication to offering the best in entertainment to its customers, beginning Nov. 15, 2005, 72 channels of XM's quality music, children's, and talk programming will be available via DIRECTV, nearly doubling its current audio programming lineup at no additional cost. In addition to music channels and children's programming, XM will provide XM's Major League Baseball "Home Plate" talk radio channel, and its High Voltage channel, featuring talk radio stars Opie and Anthony.

sure enough, channels 801-879 are now XM radio stations. Channel lineup (PDF)

it took them long enough -- Sirius has evidently been providing Dish with radio content since sometime last year. but better late than never... the stereo sound quality is good, and the "top" stations appear to be represented. my faves are all there -- deep tracks, top tracks, real jazz, beyond jazz, xm live, xm cafe, xmu, fred, ethel, music lab, lucy, the loft. perhaps they'll figure out a way to allow a local traffic & weather station based on subscriber zip code!

the only glitches i can see are that song synchronization is sometimes slow, and some stations provide minimal (or even no) song info -- which is weird since it seems like it would just be a port of exactly what is coming through normally. but hey, it's free!

between this and free internet streaming, i'll definitely be keeping my satellite radio unit in the car!